Remember? Christmas is always perfect

The first Christmas I remember was in St. Louis when we lived in a second-floor apartment of a two-story house with a mansard roof not too long after the end of World War II. The girl who lived with her family in the first-floor apartment was the luckiest girl I knew.

I can't remember the little girl's name, but I can still see the fake brick fireplace made of cardboard against a wall in the front room of the apartment, plainly visible through the door from the hallway leading to the stairs. Orange cellophane was the make-believe fire in the play-like fireplace.

What a lucky little girl.

---

On the farm in Killough Valley over yonder in the Ozarks, the approach of Christmas meant getting a tree, a cedar tree, growing wild just about everywhere except on our farm. Thanks to generous relatives and neighbors, we didn't have to go far to find just the right cedar.

Our Christmas trees did not look like the perfectly symmetrical visions of arboreal perfection sold today. Most tree lots get their trees from farms where annual trimming ensures that there are no flat sides. And the plastic and metal trees that come in boxes all look like the Stepford wives of the forest.

Not so with wild cedars. These trees were planted by birds and tended by God. When we look for the perfection of the Almighty's handiwork, you might wonder why no wild cedar tree looks perfect. There's a lesson there, one that young farm boys do not ponder, but graying men sometimes do.

The lesson is this: Perfection is not found in beauty. It resides in the potential of what we can be. Cedar trees have one objective, which is to stay alive. Some of them manage to hang on for hundreds of years. With each passing year they get closer to perfection.

In the living room of the farmhouse where I grew up, we put the flat side of a young cedar next to the wall. The rest of the tree was covered with ornaments and garland and tinsel. It was always the most beautiful tree I've ever seen. It was always nearly perfect.

---

The best ornaments for any Christmas tree are those made by your children, or relatives, or friends.

The first Christmas tree of our marriage was purchased 42 years ago at a supermarket where we should have been spending the $12 on groceries. After all, $12 was about our weekly budget for food. But the trees lined up outside the supermarket door were literally beckoning to us as the December wind whipped through their branches.

We had no ornaments for our extravagant tree, so my wife went inside the supermarket and bought a bag of wrapped red-and-white peppermints. When we got the tree home, we tied the peppermints to the limbs with red thread. When we were done, it was the most beautiful tree we had ever seen. It was nearly perfect. We still have a handful of the peppermints in the big box in the basement labeled "XMAS."

---

Our sons made ornaments as they were growing up. Over the years, this involved scissors, glue, plaster of Paris, yarn, school photos, food coloring, pipe cleaners, cotton balls, construction paper, felt-tip markers and a can of gold spray paint. They are the most beautiful ornaments in the world. They are nearly perfect.

---

In all of my growing-up years, Christmas was held together by baling wire. Literally. Little by little, wire coat hangers took the place of baling wire. If plastic coat hangers finally replace all the wire hangers, how will we fasten Christmas together?

---

There's nothing more satisfying than a good Christmas memory. When the big day rolls around Tuesday and you're with family and friends, take time to share some of your best holiday recollections. That would be the best present in the world. It would be nearly perfect.

R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.